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| Never looked better. |
I hadn’t taken any leave since September, when I started,
and figured I was due around my birthday. So, after pricing flights and being
astounded at how much it cost to fly to places within China, I headed out.
And I ended up painting the town red. Or, as the case turned
out to be, the town wound up painting me.
After arriving on Saturday, I helped out a friend of my
friend on Sunday morning, which is a work day in Bangladesh. We went to a school in
the slums (keep in mind this is Bangladesh
slums, not American slums) and gave an apple and a banana to each of the kids.
I went into three of the classes and entertained the kids wholly.
First class, I asked them to sing a song in English and
suggested “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Next class, I asked a little girl to
pick a song and they went into some song about an astronaut that was in
English, but I’d never heard it before.
The third class was math, so I taught them a theater warm-up
from Peace Corps where you count down from 8 to 4 to 2 to 1 on your right hand,
left hand, right foot, left foot. They loved it.
On Monday, I signed up for a tour of Old Dhaka. The city is
400 years old, and the Old Dhaka part is pretty congested with a good
percentage of the city’s 16 million residence. Many arrive into the city by
boat from some other town across the river and cross by ferry.
The docks were the first stop on my little tour and man, it
smelled. Overall, Jakarta reminded me of a
combination of Jakarta, Morocco, India
(that part was traffic) and Cambodia.
The people were really friendly, too.
My tour guide and I went onto one of the ferries, which could
hold over a thousand people. Granted, this wasn’t a sweet ride. There were no
chairs and it would have been standing room only over several levels. I went on
and it was empty, save for the random worker, sleeping on the floor or benches.
From the top deck, I could watch the little boats ferry
passengers back and forth across a pretty dank looking river. There was trash
everywhere, but the recycling program was pretty effective. Crude (as in trash
pickers) but effective. And plastic bags are outlawed.
Pretty much all weekend (including the flight) was almost
all men. It had just occurred to me on the docks that I hadn’t seen a single
female when I spotted this little girl, maybe 7 or 8, who was taking flak but
holding her own with some boys. We bonded and I asked the tour guide what her
likely story was. He said she was probably a street kid, which was really
depressing.
We also went to a market, where I saw a ton of coconuts
among other things, the parliament building and their equivalent of the White
House, only it was salmon colored.
But the weirdest thing was at some random street, where
there was a party going on.
There is some Hindu holiday on March 17 and although I have
no idea what it means, it prompts kids up to young adult to go into the street
and party as they’re having dye squirted at them. It was completely bizarre. I
watched for awhile and my tour guide asked if I minded getting wet and, well,
no, I didn’t.
So I waded into the throng, which delighted the kids. I
didn’t dance but did get squirted. My guide assured me it would come out, but
it didn’t. Ah, well. Thrift store finds anyway. Well, not the bra, which now
looks tie-dyed, too.
But it was incredibly fun, and definitely something I won’t
experience again, especially on my birthday.
Later in the evening, I went bowling with some of my
friend’s colleagues, which was also a ton of fun I do stink at bowling but
that’s not the point. I almost cracked triple digits!
All in all, it was a fabulous way to spend birthday No. 45.
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